


The Love That Had Me In Your Grip Was Just a Long, Long Grift

by DoctorSyntax



Category: Castle, Leverage
Genre: Crossover, F/F, F/M, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-06 14:10:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/419767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorSyntax/pseuds/DoctorSyntax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Jenny O'Malley is nothing more than the alias of a grifter, Parker's her occasional accomplice and occasional bedfellow, and Kevin Ryan is the perfect husband to a woman who doesn't actually exist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Love That Had Me In Your Grip Was Just a Long, Long Grift

**Author's Note:**

> Contains spoilers for Castle, particularly the Johanna Beckett case, through 4.06.

You have a lot of names: Scout, Duffy, Juliana—to list a few—but your favorite is Jenny and that's the one you're using when you meet homicide detective Kevin Ryan at the halfway-to-dive bar your mark frequents. You've been Jenny O'Malley, clothing buyer and aspiring fashion designer, for almost a week now and the act fits like a glove, comfortable and familiar. Jenny's sweet and a little shy, flirts with glances and smiles instead of words and physical contact like you do, and you need the practice with the new style. Besides, Kevin's cute, all boyish good looks and honest eyes, and your mark won't be here for another half-hour at least.

You play off him so easily it's like Jenny was custom-made for him and as your mark comes strolling through the front door Detective Ryan's in the middle of inviting you to dinner sometime, _thisclose_ to stumbling over the words, and on a whim you say yes. You know, intellectually, that certain cops can be more easily fooled than certain civilians and Kevin Ryan, with his open face and easy smile is probably one of them—but there's still a tiny thrill of risk that incites you to accept, to satiate your need to live on the edge even as you cocoon yourself inside the shell of Jenny O'Malley's safe little life.

Plus, how often do you get the chance to test if your alias can make it intact through a date with a police officer? It'd be a shame to waste an opportunity like this.

*

At first you don't intend to let the relationship last more than one date, but Detective Ryan's amusing, in a sweet, dorky way, and it's fun to be around him; it's like you're running two cons with one alias and the challenge of that excites you. Plus, being a cop's girlfriend basically solidifies you as a trustworthy individual, lends you a credibility you can't fabricate with smooth words and people skills.

You take a perverse glee in selecting the most hideous tie you can find for your second-week anniversary: if you're going to play the part of clingy girlfriend, you're going to play it to the hilt. It's not like you're going to spend much longer as Jenny anyway.

Being with Detective Ryan fills in the edges on Jenny's personality, makes her feel more whole than any alias you've taken on in years, and you know you could spend years as her without ever slipping up, if you wanted to.

You don't want to, but the point is that you _could_.

*

You get a call a few days later from a go-between telling you to drop your current job but keep the alias. The Dragon caught wind of you extracurricular activities and wants you to run a long-term grift—he's needed someone inside the 12th Precinct for a while now—and your first instinct is to say _hell no_. You don't leave jobs unfinished.

But then the voice on the phone mentions a price, and you begin to reconsider. Call waiting flashes up on the screen while you're working out the details. It's Detective Ryan, calling to wish you sweet dreams.

You like the Jenny O'Malley you created for him: sweet, a little shy, a proper lady that needs to be protected to feel safe. He likes feeling needed, loves taking care of you. You don't see any good reason why you can't have your cake and eat it too.

You say yes.

*

Kevin's a tenuous link to the 12th Precinct but a good introduction to something more solid, so you come to pick him up at the station one day and meet his team. You can't resist pulling out all the stops in charming them and you know it surprises Kevin: he's wide-eyed, impressed, as you head toward the elevators. It should have been the first warning about what was to come, but you didn't heed it, too caught up analyzing the minute details of how his team interacted with you.

At the very forefront of your thoughts is Javier Esposito. You've been hearing about him literally since day one, and you'd formed your own conclusions about who Kevin is to him, but as you say _Keep him safe out there, okay?_ (because he needs to be the protector as much as Kevin needs to be the provider) and he nods like he's swearing a solemn oath, you realize how perfectly wrong you were. About him, and about Kevin too. At first you'd thought Kevin's nonstop _Esposito this_ and _Javier that_ was a mild kind of hero-worship, but as the weeks had passed and you'd heard more, the true shape of things began to emerge. Now, today, you're certain: you don't need to worry so much about breaking Kevin's heart when you leave, because it had never been yours at all.

You convince Kevin to take you for a tour of the precinct before the movie— _nothing classified or off-limits, I don't want you to get into trouble, but I just really want to see more of where you work. You keep mentioning Lieutenant Jones, from the records room, I think? I'd love to meet him._

*

You come to the station again a couple weeks later, this time to surprise Kevin with lunch. You send a text halfway through eating and on your way out you swing by the records room to say hello to Lieutenant Jones. 

You don't know how Parker's getting into the precinct and you don't care; it's not your job to worry about that. It's your job to supply Parker with details about the precinct layout and security and to keep Jones occupied for the fifty seconds it takes Parker retrieves a handful of files.

Files which are waiting in a stack on your kitchen table when you get home. You alter them according to the instructions you've been given and then tape them in a manila envelope under your bed, to be held until the next time the two of you can get in. 

It's slow-going; too risky to grab more than a few files at once, in case someone goes looking for them, and too-frequent trips to the precinct would begin to look suspicious of even the most devoted girlfriend. You've spent too long building this cover; you're not about to risk blowing it.

Especially since you don't know what the files are, what this job is even about. Certain names crop up over and over—Montgomery, Raglan, and McCallister—but that could just be a coincidence. Parker mentions something about correcting records that dirty cops have altered, but if you know the Dragon like you think you do, you're probably covering up things those dirty cops left unfinished.

You don't tell Parker that, though; when Archie introduced the two of you all those years ago, she'd been different. She wouldn't have cared as long as she was getting paid. You're still like that, all you're after is a payday, but Parker runs with Nate Ford's crew these days and she's changed. Sometimes you look at her and can hardly believe she's the same person.

Then she brushes by you and suddenly your bra is gone, and you're sure it's her.

*

Week after week you pull job after job—some long cons, ones that last months, and some short ones spanning days or even hours—and still every day when you come home, you're back to being Jenny O'Malley. 

And domesticity chafes. You're not Jenny and you never will be, but as you spend long and longer amounts of time inside Jenny's headspace you begin to catch yourself forgetting that. Sometimes you lie for so long you forget what the truth is, and sometimes you only remember enough to feel wrong in your own skin, to hate who you've become and feel like you'll suffocate on your own breath if you don't get out.

Whenever it gets to be too much you plan a 'business trip' to Boston—where, thank god, the Berglin headquarters are, so it doesn't even seem suspicious—and you count down the seconds to when you can show up at Parker's with a bottle of wine and a pair of police-issue handcuffs.

The two of you had come to an agreement long ago: if you can break in, you can spend the night, but nine times out of ten Parker has to let you in and the other ten percent of the time you tend to go back to the hotel afterwards anyway. You're close to being yourself with Parker—these days, it's the only time you ever hear your real name—but the only time you're truly _you_ is when you're alone, and anyway even impersonal hotel rooms are more welcoming than the warehouse Parker calls home.

Parker isn't asleep next to you, but it's Parker's bed that you call Kevin from: _Hey, baby. Long day. I miss you, can't wait to come home._ You can't call from your hotel room, won't let Jenny O'Malley slip in there even for a second, desperate for a minute's reprieve from yourself.

*

Down in Hoboken there's an older couple you consider family; a grifter and a thief, they'd taught you everything you know and even though they're out of the game now they're still your cover when you need it. You'd introduced Kevin to them as your parents when your relationship had reached the meet-the-family stage, and you get a call from them one night saying he'd just driven down there to ask for your hand in marriage. 

It's a disaster, but a perfectly-timed one; tomorrow morning you'd planned on lifting Kevin's phone out of his jacket pocket as you kissed him goodbye, something to give you an excuse to head down to the station later. While you're there you run into Javier and a half-formed plan springs into mind; you ask him who won at darts last night. Add in the fact that Natalie Rhodes is apparently shadowing Detective Beckett that day, and Javier's confused face is the perfect cue for the mini-tantrum you throw. You storm out spectacularly and head straight down to the records room to cry on Lieutenant Jones's shoulder for a few minutes while Parker gets what she needs and gets out.

It's only when you're halfway through changing names and dates on long-cold casefiles that you realize your plan won't work: _you still need Kevin_. You can't break up with him now, which means you're going to have to get married.

You call Parker, tell her you're going to take another run at the station today, and head back to apologize. While you're there, Kevin proposes to you, which you'd been counting on, and you cry, which you hadn't been counting on. The tears that spring to your eyes are part panic, part reflex (crying can get you out of just about any tight situation), and part the genuine reaction of Jenny O'Malley. 

It's the last part that worries you. But then there's a million people congratulating you and your new fiancé, and you drag Kevin down to the records room to tell Lieutenant Jones the good news, and you don't think much about it.

*

A couple months after Detective Beckett gets shot, you receive word that the con's going to be winding down over the next year. You begin to lay the groundwork for your exit, and when Kevin begins planning a double-date with Lanie and Javier, you remember, suddenly, that Javier being with Lanie makes your original exit strategy null. 

You watch them carefully throughout the evening, trying to gauge just how attached they are to each other, and what you find frustrates you to no end. There's a little fiddling feeling in your gut, something like dread, as you realize just how close Javier is to giving up on Kevin and settling for someone who would make him happy but wouldn't make him whole.

You did this. You've been too selfish, stuck around too long, and now you need to fix it. And at the end of the night, you realize exactly where you need to push.

_So when are you two getting married?_

You almost feel bad when Kevin comes home from work the next day and says Lanie and Javi split up. He's trying to be delicate about how much of their argument was completely, totally, one-hundred-percent your fault, but you're proud of how perfectly you played it off. If it was that easy to break them up they wouldn't have lasted anyway, and it serves the greater good. 

You're not going to be around forever, after all, and Kevin needs someone to catch him when you go.

*

Halfway through your wedding reception, as forks clink against wineglasses and you turn to your husband with a smile, you realize you've bought your own con. 

And you're both going to pay the price.

*

It's almost a year later when the job is finally over, and for a few brief moments you actually consider giving up grifting. You have a life here, a perfect husband—no. _Jenny_ has a life here, _Jenny_ has a perfect husband. There's nothing here that's yours anymore, and you've sacrificed enough of your life to being Jenny O'Malley: you aren't about to relinquish the rest of it. 

You miss him when you go; you'd never tried to fool yourself for a second that you wouldn't. Leaving notes isn't your usual style—leave no trace, like you'd never been there at all, it's safer that way—but nothing about this con has been your usual style, and Kevin deserves something. 

Even if, in the end, what it amounts to is nothing at all.

The worst part of is that you're not leaving the city; you're shedding this identity like a skin, getting a new name and a haircut and moving twenty blocks north, but you're still in New York City, in Manhattan even. But it's not hard to disappear in a city of eight million people, especially when you have a lot of practice.

When Kevin gets home from work he'll find the apartment spotlessly clean, empty of Jenny's belongings and your DNA, divorce papers on the gleaming kitchen table with Jennifer O'Malley-Ryan's signature in all the right places—for him to sign or not, it won't make a bit of difference to you either way, but he'll get the message loud and clear—and a post-it stuck to the top page.

_I'm sorry. I'll always love you._

It's not a lie, but it feels like one.

*

Parker picks the lock on your apartment five minutes before you leave. She doesn't say anything, just stands in the doorway with an odd, proud little smile until you're ready to go.


End file.
